Electronic Textbooks

E-books are being widely adopted as alternatives to traditional textbooks. Here you'll find articles detailing new developments in the area of e-book and e-textbook technologies, along with stories about institutions adopting them.

Rice University-based publisher OpenStax College today announced a partnership with open education services provider Lumen Learning, combining OpenStax College's free textbooks with Lumen Learning's support services to help higher education institutions and faculty members successfully transition to using open educational resources (OER).

The high cost of traditional textbooks has been recognized as a likely roadblock to student success and is one of the reasons institutions are looking at the adoption of open education resources. But converting a course for OER can be a challenge for instructors. Lane Community College's OER Faculty Fellowship program offers both incentives and support for faculty adoption of OER. The college's ongoing OER adoption work of five years earned it a WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award this fall.

Courseload, a provider of e-textbooks and digital resources for higher education, has joined the Readium Foundation, a non-profit consortium that seeks to advance EPUB and Open Web Platform publishing.